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Bollywood event payoff uncertain for B.C.’s $11-million investment

Times of India Film Awards could draw 200 million viewers, promoters say

Bollywood comes to B.C. in a big way as Vancouver will play host to the Time of India Film Awards in early April.

Photograph by: NICK PROCAYLO Nick Procaylo
, PNG

What’s the payoff for British Columbia’s $11-million investment in a celebrity-driven series of events designed to market this province to residents of India?

Tough to say.

The provincial government estimates that its investment in the Times of India Film Awards — and ancillary business and entertainment events in the weeks leading up to the awards — will yield at least $13 million in direct spending and $4 million in “earned media” or favourable mentions in Times of India media publications. The Christy Clark Liberals also claim the events will spur growth in Canada-India tourism and business development.

Some calculations come from the province, some from the event promoters, some from the Canadian Tourism Commission.

But tourism and marketing experts aren’t so sure about the numbers. There is still no authoritative assessment on the return to B.C. from the billions of dollars it spent on the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, for example.

For its investment in the film awards, B.C. will be airing a three-minute promotional video during a Bollywood film awards show that will be televised live from B.C. and rebroadcast at least once on a major Indian TV network, according to the deal it made with the Times of India media conglomerate. Last fall, Times of India’s Economic Times newspaper commenced a series of four four-page advertising supplements on B.C., and the Times newspaper has provided more than a dozen mentions of the province, primarily in the entertainment and travel sections. The film award winners are decided by a global Internet vote, adding to B.C.’s “exposure,” according to government documents.

The awards show promises an Indian audience of 200 million viewers for the initial broadcast of the event, and estimates audiences of 100 million for the first rerun.

But that assertion is backed up by assumptions, not data. This is the inaugural Times of India Film Awards event, so there is no precedent to indicate it can copy the success of the event it is imitating, the Indian International Film Awards.

The Indian International event, incidentally, turned down an offer from B.C. before the province was approached by the Times of India group. IIFA claimed an audience of 500 million for an awards event in 2011 in Toronto.

B.C. says a final accounting of the return on its investment will be calculated once all awards-related events have concluded and is being “tallied independently.”

The long-term payoff, however, is a projected boost for B.C. as a destination for trade and travel from India.

India is not a core market from which to solicit tourism dollars, according to data from the Canadian Tourism Commission. Canada’s core markets are the U.S. (with 73 per cent of all international travel), then the U.K., France, Germany and Australia. India is considered an emerging travel market, reflecting the growth and affluence of that nation’s middle class.

Within Canada, about 60 per cent of travellers from India go to Ontario, and 18 per cent to B.C.

Lindsay Meredith, a marketing professor at Simon Fraser University, said he is wary of any peremptory claim for the value of a promotion.

“We have lots of correlational variables, we have lots of measurement techniques that look for correlations, but we can’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that advertising causes sales. So it’s a tough animal to measure, to start with,” Meredith said.

“If people are seeing your message, if they’re watching your TV show, that’s step number one. It gets much more complicated after that. They have to remember what the content of the exposure was all about. They have to decide that they actually liked what they saw, and then ultimately they have to try your product.

“Trying to hang an actual dollar (amount) for sales generated off of exposure to a communication is extremely difficult stuff. It’s getting even more complicated by social network systems because this is creating a whole parallel structure to mass media now.”

Peter Williams, a professor at SFU’s school of resource and environmental management, notes that it took analysts a decade to calculate a baseline tourism increase of five or six per cent for the Expo 86 World’s Fair in Vancouver.

For B.C.’s multi-billion-dollar investment in the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, there is still no final agreement on the value of the event — especially because any calculations were skewed by an economic meltdown that commenced in late 2007 and is still resonating through the global economy.

“We’re still working it out,” Williams said. “We know during the year of the Games it was a good news story, but the following couple of years were not as good and we still haven’t rebounded. We didn’t drop as far as we might have dropped, I guess, without the event.”

One positive outcome is that for B.C. tourism, global “awareness levels are higher.”

“I would think also that what we’re going to be able to say is that the relationships built with key media, key travel agencies and organizations is much stronger,” Williams said. “Certainly, Whistler’s reputation as a place for cultural events and so on has increased.”

Indian tourism, he added, is huge in Switzerland because its Alps have been used as the location for a number of Bollywood films — and James Bond movies.

Barj Dhahan, chair of the Canada-India Foundation, Dhahan is one of about 400 people who have already signed up for next week’s B.C.-India Global Business Forum, an event that’s part of the film awards package.

He is excited about the entire enterprise — notably the opportunity for networking between Canadian and Indian business leaders — but with a caveat.

One of the biggest obstacles to expanded opportunities for Canadian entrepreneurs has nothing to do with media mentions or the relatively marginal trade relationship between Canada and India.

“When you are looking at initiating new relationships, you need to meet face to face,” Dhahan said in an interview.

“One very simple challenge for Canadian and India corporate executives and small- and medium-sized business owners is lack of travel options between the two countries,” he said. “There is not a single airline that has a non-stop service between Vancouver and Delhi or Toronto and Delhi. That is a barrier in itself, even in today’s day and age.”

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